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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I think it was the line, ““I want to stop soon”” that provoked my noble friend Lord Higgins to get to his feet. Again, this has been a very useful debate, with two parallel arguments. I go back to my opening remarks: nobody underestimates the horror of mesothelioma and the importance of getting speedy redress for sufferers. Parallel to that, however, are the attempts that we are trying to bring forward to bring some order to the costs of litigation. It simply is not true that the Jackson reforms are intended just to catch dodgy whiplash claims. There was a general feeling that the amendments to CFAs which the previous Administration introduced brought in an overall inflation of costs in our legal system. We all pay for that inflation. I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Wills, said, but the truth is that the present system which the sufferers have to use is slow and expensive. I repeat that the intention of this Government is to move as speedily as possible to get to where we can through agreement with the industry, to get litigation out of the way. It is true, as has been said by a number of noble Lords, that there was callous treatment of sufferers. There was slow movement in addressing the issue, but that accusation does not lie at this Government's door. We have moved very quickly in our attempts to get agreement with the industry.